Mouse cursor disappears on windows 8.1 Multiple monitors

simonjonestlpFeb 5, 2014, 12:26 PM

Hello

My mouse cursor has disappeared. It is still active - e.g. I can move it around the screen and when I happen to land on something clickable I see the hand icon. But otherwise the cursor is not visible in it's normal state.

I use windows 8.1 with an HP wireless mouse and I have 2 monitors attached (via HDMI and USB/VGA converter) to my Sony Vaio Multiflip 15 laptop. With all 3 screens (including the laptop) visible and working. The laptop screen is 2880x1680 and the monitors are 1920x1080 and 1280x1024.

After playing around I discovered that in 'control panel > display' I can set the zoom level to 200% (which helps with the h-def display when i'm in just laptop mode) and the mouse cursor becomes visible and working again. But when I set the zoom back to 100% the cursor disappears.

I have tried disconnecting the mouse and using the trackpad and that didn't appear to have any affect.

Any suggestions would be very welcome..

Thanks in advance.

Simon

/* update after some more investigation */In the display settings I have "Let me choose one scaling level for all my displays" checked. From 100% - 149% scaling the cursor disappears, but anything from 150% upwards the cursor is visible. Feels like a bug to me rather than a setting I can change (but I'm hoping not....?)

When the cursor disappears (probably because you have just changed the zoom settings, signed out/in etc.), unplug all monitors (whilst still on) and plug them back in one by one, each time checking that the cursor is still visible. Your cursor should stay visible from then on. Ta da!

I have no idea the technical reasons for the cause or solution, but this seems to work. Thanks TomsHardware for giving me a space to brainstorm (with myself). I hope this is useful to others.

This probably won't help you but it's something I discovered by accident a few months ago when I was still using Windows 8.0 on my laptop. (I upgraded to 8.1 a couple of weeks back.)

My cursor had a habit of disappearing in what appeared to be an erratic fashion. It worked for the first minute or so after booting up, then disappeared. But if I switched users to a second ID that I had set up, it worked fine all the time. This made no sense to me and was very exasperating; I couldn't figure out how to keep the cursor from disappearing on the main ID.

It turned out that I had messed myself up by accident. After some major frustrations with troubleshooting, I finally figured out what must have happened. In reaching for Fn-F10 to mute my sound, I had inadvertently hit Fn-F9, which turns off the trackpad. The disabling of the trackpad didn't take effect immediately upon hitting Fn-F9; it probably took 30 seconds or a minute before I lost the cursor. There was also no notification on the screen to tell me that I had disabled my trackpad (in the same way this laptop displays "Caps Lock ON" or "Caps Lock Off" in big bubbles when I hit that key) and there was no confirmation dialog asking "You are about to disable your trackpad. Are you sure you want to do this?". The change only affected the account in which I was working when I had hit Fn-F9, which was reasonable; that also explained why the second account didn't lose its cursor. My guess is that Windows doesn't check to see if the trackpad is off immediately upon bootup but does it several seconds after giving you the desktop; that's why the trackpad still worked for a minute or so despite supposedly being off. Once I turned the trackpad back on with another Fn-F9, everything was perfect again.

I realize this almost certainly doesn't address your problem but thought I'd post it anyway in case someone in the future searches for "cursor disappears in Windows" and finds your thread. If they look far enough down, they may see that my solution fixes their problem.

This worked for me! Thanks! (using windows 8.1 having 1 monitor attached (via HDMI and USB/VGA converter) to my Asus.

simonjonestlp said:

When the cursor disappears (probably because you have just changed the zoom settings, signed out/in etc.), unplug all monitors (whilst still on) and plug them back in one by one, each time checking that the cursor is still visible. Your cursor should stay visible from then on. Ta da!

This worked for me! Thanks! (using windows 8.1 having 1 monitor attached (via HDMI and USB/VGA converter) to my Asus.

simonjonestlp said:

When the cursor disappears (probably because you have just changed the zoom settings, signed out/in etc.), unplug all monitors (whilst still on) and plug them back in one by one, each time checking that the cursor is still visible. Your cursor should stay visible from then on. Ta da!

This probably won't help you but it's something I discovered by accident a few months ago when I was still using Windows 8.0 on my laptop. (I upgraded to 8.1 a couple of weeks back.)

My cursor had a habit of disappearing in what appeared to be an erratic fashion. It worked for the first minute or so after booting up, then disappeared. But if I switched users to a second ID that I had set up, it worked fine all the time. This made no sense to me and was very exasperating; I couldn't figure out how to keep the cursor from disappearing on the main ID.

It turned out that I had messed myself up by accident. After some major frustrations with troubleshooting, I finally figured out what must have happened. In reaching for Fn-F10 to mute my sound, I had inadvertently hit Fn-F9, which turns off the trackpad. The disabling of the trackpad didn't take effect immediately upon hitting Fn-F9; it probably took 30 seconds or a minute before I lost the cursor. There was also no notification on the screen to tell me that I had disabled my trackpad (in the same way this laptop displays "Caps Lock ON" or "Caps Lock Off" in big bubbles when I hit that key) and there was no confirmation dialog asking "You are about to disable your trackpad. Are you sure you want to do this?". The change only affected the account in which I was working when I had hit Fn-F9, which was reasonable; that also explained why the second account didn't lose its cursor. My guess is that Windows doesn't check to see if the trackpad is off immediately upon bootup but does it several seconds after giving you the desktop; that's why the trackpad still worked for a minute or so despite supposedly being off. Once I turned the trackpad back on with another Fn-F9, everything was perfect again.

I realize this almost certainly doesn't address your problem but thought I'd post it anyway in case someone in the future searches for "cursor disappears in Windows" and finds your thread. If they look far enough down, they may see that my solution fixes their problem.